Speaking the world's most common language

Lu Wang teaches a Chinese language class at Costa Mesa High School Thursday morning. The class learns the Mandarin dialect and is a hit with students and has two full sections. A third section is being added this week.STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Why learn Chinese

Long seen as the over-achiever's language, Mandarin is now finding its place in mainstream education. Experts in the business and political sectors say there are a variety of industries that could benefit from more Mandarin-speakers.

Tourism: Chinese tourists spend more than $6,000 per person per U.S. visit, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Now, county tourism officials are taking measures to attract tourists from China to the area in the hopes of bringing the growing population to local hotels, shopping center and attractions.

Retail: With tourism comes shopping, said Jack Hsu, executive director of UC Irvine's U.S.-China Institute for Business and Law. "Stores are beginning to hire staff for their Chinese language ability because a lot of the people who come in and spend the most money at places like South Coast Plaza are Chinese shoppers," Hsu said.

Government: Mandarin is one of the U.S. government's "strategic languages," said Susan Jain, executive director of the Confucius Institute at UCLA. It's one country the United States is making efforts to enhance bonds with as the country becomes an economic powerhouse. For instance, in November 2009, President Barack Obama announced the "100,000 Strong" initiative, which became an organization designed to increase the number of American students studying in China.

Investment: The federal investment incentive known as EB5 makes it possible for wealthy immigrants to do business in the U.S. as a way of gaining citizenship. Most of those investors are coming from China, and the majority are doing business such as real estate investment in California, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Investors here should prepare to cater to Chinese buyers and sellers, Hsu said.

Education: Scholarships and affordable education are increasingly available to American students who want to learn in China. One of the more recent indications of this was American financier Stephen Schwarzman's establishment of a scholarship designed to fund master's students at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Culture: Southern California is home to a major population of the United States' Chinese population. "China is part of California culture," Jain said. She said that as the population grows and interest in American schools expands, the culture will become even more enmeshed in California lifestyles.

More than 40 students are packed in a classroom at Costa Mesa High School drawing small, clumsy characters on white boards. They're mimicking their teacher, Lu Wang, who gives them hints at the front of the classroom as they decipher the characters.

“Two lines through the center of the box, what does that mean? Two eyes, very good,” Wang says.

The students are learning the language spoken by the most people in the world: Mandarin. The beginning class was added at the high school this year, becoming the first school in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to offer it.

In its first week at the high school, the two course sections offered to students were so full that the school considered adding a third section.

The eagerness of students to take the Mandarin class at Costa Mesa High mirrors a trend seen around the country. Students and their parents are increasingly aware of how the language might expand their career choices after college and are pushing schools to add the courses, said Susan Jain, executive director of the Confucius Institute at UCLA, an organization that helps train Chinese instructors.

“China represents a huge market in many areas,” Jain said. “Its growing middle class means that they are developing a consumer culture. It's an opportunity for us to be selling our goods and services to them.”

Wang, 33, said her students primarily take the class because they want a new experience or a challenge. More than half already speak Spanish at home and are on their way to becoming trilingual – an attractive quality on a college resume.

A scattered few, such as freshman Eric Carrasco, are interested in it for business purposes. “I want to be a shoe designer,” the Costa Mesa 14-year-old said after class last week. “If I want to do that, I have to work with China.”

Principal Phil D'Agostino said it's part of the school's mission to teach “21st Century” concepts to students. The phrase is thrown around a lot in education, and administrators tend to associate it with a need for technology rather than global industries, D'Agostino said.

“It's so much more than iPads,” he said. “We want to produce dynamic human beings who can think on their feet and apply knowledge to situations. It might sound over-the-top, but we want our students to be intellectually cosmopolitan – meaning, they have to know stuff. They have to know what's going on in the world.”

D'Agostino, the son of Maltese immigrants, and a few other administrators at the high school led the charge in adding the classes this year and are working toward starting an exchange with students in Chinese cities. Students in the school's business classes are also learning about Chinese and other Asian markets.

“I told my students on the first day, ‘if you want to sell things, look at that population,'” Wang said.

The Costa Mesa students have a long way to go before they get to that point, though. Classes this early in the year are focused on a select few phrases and basic pronunciation. By the end of last week, Wang's students had learned about 20 characters. They also learned how to type in Chinese because, as Wang put it, “who handwrites anything anymore?”

A surprisingly sparse amount of English is spoken in the beginning-level course. Like many Mandarin courses being taught in American high schools, there's a strong emphasis on conversational skills. The last 20 minutes of the class is spent in partner work, with students nervously rehearsing sentences such as, “Is Justin Bieber good-looking?” in broken Mandarin. Wang repeats phrases her students have learned with hand motions, or shouts out words for her students to etch on desk-side whiteboards.

Wang, who grew up in China's Sichuan province, started teaching her native language to English-speaking students at the private school level four years ago. Up until about five years ago, it was rare to find Chinese teaching opportunities at public schools, she said.

Now, schools around the country are adding the classes, including Woodbridge High in Irvine, Laguna Hills High and Beckman High in Tustin.

It's not just the beginning-level classes that are taking off, either. In 2007, Advanced Placement Chinese courses became available for college credit at schools around the country. That year, about 3,000 California students signed up for the class. In 2012, the number tripled to more than 9,000 students in the state, said Leslie Sepuka, spokeswoman for The College Board, which oversees the courses and exams.

Though Wang knew the language was gaining popularity, she was surprised at the amount of interest at Costa Mesa High. She agreed to do two sections of the class, but was shocked when both sections filled to more than 40 students each.

Lu Wang teaches a Chinese language class at Costa Mesa High School Thursday morning. The class learns the Mandarin dialect and is a hit with students and has two full sections. A third section is being added this week. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students in Costa Mesa High School's Chinese language class hold up whiteboards to show teacher Lu Wang characters they are practicing writing Thursday. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A Chinese flag, left, and an American flag, right, in the classroom at Costa Mesa High School used for teaching Mandarin Thursday. Mandarin is a dialect of Chinese primarily from the north. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Mandarin characters inscribed on a student's homework assignment at Costa Mesa High School Thursday. Costa Mesa High School currently has two Chinese classes that are full and plans on adding a third due to demand. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students in Costa Mesa High School's Chinese language class hold up whiteboards to show teacher Lu Wang characters they are practicing writing Thursday. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Lu Wang teaches a Chinese language class at Costa Mesa High School Thursday morning. The class learns the Mandarin dialect and is a hit with students and has two full sections. A third section is being added this week. STUART PALLEY, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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